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Penguin: I think he works best when he operates as a middle man, a fence and information broker rather than a mobster in his own right. The Iceberg Lounge can do double duty as a legitimate front for his black market deals as well as a Casablanca type neutral ground for competing mobsters. Doesn't need to be deformed, just a short, portly guy that got his name for his preference for black tie formal wear and an almost snobbish sense of vanity. Likes to think of himself as a cultured intellectual and prides himself on his blue blood background (the the old Cobblepot fortune has long since dried up.)

Riddler: Easy in this day and age. He's a crazed, shut-in blogger turned predatory serial killer with a thing for puzzles. He's smart enough to be able to show off his handy work while protecting his identity, but can't resist leaving clues. Imagine something along the lines of the Zodiac killer with an internet connection.

Catwoman: Very little adaptation needed with Selina, just so long as the costume is a tasteful mix of style (she is a "cat" after all) and practicality. The full body jumpsuit actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that she wouldn't want to leave behind fingerprints, fibres or even DNA at the scene of the crime.

Poison Ivy: Botanist turned eco-terrorist with a thing for honey traps and exotic poisons with no known antidotes. Probably targeting Bruce's industrialist buddies (or Wayne Enterprises in general) for their involment in oil spills, logging, pesticides and toxic waste dumping. A genuinely stunning beauty who uses her looks to get close to powerful men and dose them with a slow acting contact poison.

Victor Fries: As others have said, the BTAS take is pretty much the definitive version in terms of his characterisation. It's just a matter of making the cryonic stuff halfway plausible (as plausible as sonar phones and memory cloth at least.)

Killer Croc: Huge meat-head, possibly ex-military/special forces (perhaps discharged for violent misconduct and general psychotic behaviour?) Maybe joined up to escape a childhood in the circus as a sideshow attraction (do those things still even exist?), maybe has a scale like skin condition. Probably heavily into body modification, filed teeth, split tongue, implants under the skin, facial tattoos, that kind of thing. Basically hired muscle but with a mean streak about a mile wide and a really sick and creative taste for pain also makes him very sought after as an underworld "interrogator".

Harley Quinn: As with Catwoman and Freeze; if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Just giver her more of a gothy/punk/Priss from Blade Runner look and it's job done.

Bane: Lucha libre type wrestler and steroid freak turned Mexican drug cartel enforcer. Did some time in some of the southern hemisphere's least pleasant correctional facilities. Maybe a qualified pharmacologist before he fell on hard times and venom is his own personal cocktail of steroids, amphetamine and growth hormones. A nasty brew that maintains his physique and fuels his berserker rage but has made his body so dependent on it, he can never stop taking it or else he'll go into terminal withdrawal. Much smarter than he looks and went from hired goon to running a cabal by systematically killing his way up the food chain while keeping his competitors at each other's throats.

I thought of another one. Poison Ivy could be a botanist who loses it and starts using plant based toxins to commit crimes and/or targets plant related locations.

Reverend wrote:

Poison Ivy: Botanist turned eco-terrorist with a thing for honey traps and exotic poisons with no known antidotes. Probably targeting Bruce's industrialist buddies (or Wayne Enterprises in general) for their involment in oil spills, logging, pesticides and toxic waste dumping. A genuinely stunning beauty who uses her looks to get close to powerful men and dose them with a slow acting contact poison.

Better yet give her martial arts talent. Make her Vietnamese. And change her name to "Cheshire."

Actually, given the pop cultural abyss that was B+R, that's maybe not the worst idea.

But it reminds me, Deadshot would work out fine for a Nolan film.

The Riddler's problem in a movie is the same as my impression of most of his comics: he's fun enough, but all he can do is offer a generic Batman case. For a $3 comic, that's okay; for a theatrical film, a generic Batman case is insufficient.

The Mad Hatter: He could work with very little modification from the Batman: The Animated Series incarnation, just have him use mind-controlling drugs on his victims instead of brainwave inducing microchips.

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The Mad Hatter: He could work with very little modification from the Batman: The Animated Series incarnation, just have him use mind-controlling drugs on his victims instead of brainwave inducing microchips.

Like sodium penthahol or something?? That could work.

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Capt_Pickirk... also known as Greenpenguino everywhere else but here. Because everywhere else is more awesome than here...

The Riddler's problem in a movie is the same as my impression of most of his comics: he's fun enough, but all he can do is offer a generic Batman case. For a $3 comic, that's okay; for a theatrical film, a generic Batman case is insufficient.

Which is the real challenge if we're playing around with this - not just how the Rogues would fit into the Nolan universe, but how would they fit into a Nolan-verse story? His movies have been quite clever at creating a coherent Gotham City that feels like it works as a real city, and combining several villains far more successfuly than other projects.

With rumors on that Detroit and New Orleans will be sites of the filming of the next movie, sounds like Nolan is going to up the urban decay of Gotham considerably. Perhaps something along the lines of, the citizens of Gotham are demoralized by the murder of their one trustworthy and inspiring public official, dashing DA Harvey Dent, and the revelation that the Batman is a vicious killer, plus the trauma the city went through under the Joker's rampage. The mob is furious at how close they came to going down and, with Lao's and Dent's deaths and the case against them destroyed, are back on the streets with a vengeance. Inspired by the Joker and the general sense of chaos gripping the city, psychopaths who may have been existing quietly in the city for years are suddenly triggered, and disturbing crimes begin to pop up all over the city. The police force is split between corrupt cops making the most of the situation, and good cops under extreme public pressure to bring in the Batman, who is generally blamed for the out of control state of things.

As has been speculated for the next movie, Dr. Hugo Strange emerges on the scene as a brilliant FBI profiler/ criminal psychologist doing the talk show circuit and then asked to consult with the police on the Batman task force and some of the other freakish crimes. Suffering from extreme Narcissistic Personality Disorder he becomes obsessed with manipulating the situation in Gotham to maintain his fame and position as the expert on Gotham's escalating crime problem.

He sometimes secretly frequents the Iceberg Lounge, where the owner, Oswald Cobblepot, is an amusing, charming, corrupt information broker of the underworld. A la Louis Renault from Casablanca, Penguin, as he is called for his tuxes and pear-shaped body, is without loyalty and will cooperate with criminals or the law as he finds useful to enrich himself. He never gets his hands dirty enough to fear prosecution, but does know what muscle to hire when needed - this may be anyone from Dr. Jonathon Crane who still slinks about peddling his insanity-inducing drugs to expert thug Killer Croc (I like the body mod fanatic idea for him - perhaps he has a nearly full-body crocodile tattoo) to the cold-blooded assassin for hire known only as Deadshot. (or these characters could be associated with specific mob gangs - see below)

Penguin's got a lot to trade in these days because after the Lao experience and the death of the heads of two major gangs (Gambol and Sal), the various organized crime groups are no longer observing the spheres of influence they used to respect in Gotham, and an all-out gang war has heated up, leaving the normal citizens under seige. Ostensibly out to solve this problem, Strange instead manipulates information through Penguin to sustain the war, forcing the Batman (his greatest obsession is to discover the Batman's true identity so he can understand his psychology, write a book and retire rich and respected) to be out in force night after night, giving him lots of data from which to work.

That's all I've got for the moment, if anyone else wants to try to weave any of the other Rogues into this. Feel free to modify the above as seems Nolan-ish to you...

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He sometimes secretly frequents the Iceberg Lounge, where the owner, Oswald Cobblepot, is an amusing, charming, corrupt information broker of the underworld. A la Louis Renault from Casablanca, Penguin, as he is called for his tuxes and pear-shaped body, is without loyalty and will cooperate with criminals or the law as he finds useful to enrich himself.

He can also be a big fish importer which could lead to a scene at the docks and debut a sleek bat boat.

Here's my thoughts on how some of my favorite Batman villains might be able to fit into the universe that Christopher Nolan has created:The Penguin
Most people who have tried to 'Nolan-ize' Penguin have made him a simple mob boss with a fascination with/fetish for umbrellas and birds, but my take on the character is to make him a toned-down version, stylistically, of the Freak!Penguin introduced by Tim Burton in Batman Returns and played by Danny DeVito. What I mean by this is that you retain the disfigured/deformed nature of the Penguin's physical features, but do away with anything that takes him into over-the-top, circus-freak territory (such as the eating of raw fish and living in the sewers with genetically engineered penguins), and make his motivations revolve around his own personal psyche issues and the way that he perceives the world in relation to his deformities/disfigurations (similar, in some ways, to the way that Nolan and Heath Ledger characterized the Joker). Nolan won't ever use the character, unfortunately, but, if the WB decides to keep the more realistic tone established by Nolan in future, post-Nolan films, I could see a future director or directors deciding to use the character.

Clayface
My favorite version of Clayface (the Batman: TAS version) is, unfortunately, an impossibility in terms of fitting Nolan's Bat-verse, but I don't think it's impossible for any version of the character to exist in Nolan's universe. It wouldn't be that difficult to make Clayface an assassin or spy who uses an experimental cosmetic compound (in a world where you have the existence of stuff like memory cloth and sonar waves, stuff like a 'living mask' wouldn't be entirely out of the question) to change his appearance at will. You could even make him a member of the League of Shadows if you wished.

Harley Quinn
I liked the way that the short-lived Birds of Prey TV series characterized Harley Quinn, although, for the purpsoes of the Nolan-verse, I think the best approach to utilizing the character would be, as in the case of Batman: The Animated Series, to make her a female version of the Joker, particularly the Joker as played to brilliant perfection by Heath Ledger. I don't think Nolan himself will use the character, but if the WB does decide to keep the more realistic tone of Nolan's films in future, post-Nolan films, she is definitely a character that I could see being brought in.

The Phantasm
Andrea Beaumont is a villain that is, quite frankly, tailor-made to fit into Nolan's Bat-verse, and is a character that I've mentioned I would love to see him include in TDKR, since she fits both of the two criteria that have been set out in terms of the roles that Nolan is casting for (a love interest and a villain). She also makes sense in terms of the 'status of things' in terms of the political and social climate in Nolan's version of Gotham as established by The Dark Knight, and is a villain that could be lifted, wholesale, from the source material (Batman: The Animated Series) in which she appears.

Catwoman
Most people seem to think of a Nolan-ized version of Catwoman as being a villain, but, for me, the perfect utilization of the character in terms of Nolan's universe would be to use her as a 'stand-in-' for Batman, especially after the events of The Dark Knight. Characterization-wise, I think she works best if you draw on those elements of her character which classify/identify her as the female equivalent to Bruce/Batman, and make them the 'core' of who she is and the role she plays.

Mr. Freeze
Christopher Nolan might feel otherwise, but I don't think Mr. Freeze isn't as impossible to adapt into his (Nolan's) more realistic universe as one might assume; cryonic technology does actually exist, and, in order to make it fit Nolan's universe, all you would have to do would be to make a 'realistic extraploation' in terms of the technology as it exists now and where/how it might exist in the future. Chracterization-wise, the character would need to be lifted as much as possible from Batman: The Animated Series, although you might want to tone down his obsession a bit so as to make him and his motivations more believable and less over-the-top.

The Riddler
Most people that I've seen try to 'Nolan-ize' The Riddler have made him a serial killer or something, but, personally, I think that you could very easily and feasibly adapt either the Frank Gorshin or Jim Carrey versions of the character into the Nolan-verse, although you would definitely have to tone down some of the flamboyant, over-the-top aspects of how both Gorshin and Carrey used their acting talent to bring the character(s) to life. Speaking of Carrey, one of my 'pipe-dreams' is in fact to see him 'reprise' a less overtly flashy and over-the-top crazy version of the Riddler character in Nolan's universe, and, although it isn't going to happen with Nolan in charge of the franchise, it's something that I think you definitely might be able to pull off in future films should WB decide to retain the realistic tone of the universe that Nolan established, provided Carrey himself was open to the idea.

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"There is no 'supposed to be.' It's an adaptation, a word that literally means change. Why bother making a new version if it doesn't offer a fresh approach?" - Christopher L. Bennett

I'd like to see Harley Quinn played by Gigi Edgely (Chiana from Farscape) as maybe a Joker stand in basically. They could keep her origin nearly intact from Mad Love - although I do think that she and Poison Ivy could be an interesting duo. With Ivy being an environmentalist/Al Gore worshipping/hybrid pushing hippie chick who sees all the crime, corruption and violence in Gotham as hurting the environment. Teaming up with Harley partially because she's studied Joker extensively in prison and basically sees her methods of violence a means to an end.

Penquin is an almost must have - I like the above idea of keeping a sort of Burton-esque Penquin - but keeping the more B:TAS form of him, as basically an eccentric bird lover, who happens to have a taste for wearing tuxedos and shaped like a penquin. But I'd keep him a tad more unhinged in private - not quite as OTT as DeVito's but twisted. Maybe instead of being hideously deformed - he's just a rather short man with a rather long beaklike nose and webbed fingers that resemble flippers when he wears gloves. Information broker, Casablanca type does fit the character.

Killer Croc - he'd be interesting, Batman hasn't really gone up against a really TOUGH character in the Nolan-verse yet. Someone that towers over him and can basically kick his ass from here to Metropolis.

Catwoman - I think she works best as a sort of anti-hero/Robin Hood type character than an out and out villaness. I'd ditch the prostitute angle though. Although, I think I could see her as being a sort of well heeled girl from a good family, who's family was killed during earlier mob wars and basically took everything they had, from businesses to property to baubles. Possibly even went away to underake a career as an Olympic gymnast - which could help explain how she can move the way she does. Works as a cat burgler stealing from the mob bosses and criminals that stole from her family and giving part of her 'take' to charities. Sets herself up as a 'do gooder' as Selina Kyle, attracts the attention of Bruce Wayne, but only because she's going to rob Wayne Industries because they bought up one of her family's companies. Bruce and Selina meet up in their alter egos and fight briefly, the masks come off and basically she becomes Catwoman as more of a persona than just a nickname.